Arsenic plant still polluting, 10 years after it closed down
Print Edition
TOXIC waste from a plant that produced arsenic is polluting waterways in the central Hunan Province — 10 years after the business was closed down.
Some 150,000 tons of arsenic-tainted waste is stored in the abandoned plant on a hillside in Lanshan County, and run-off is severely polluting local tributaries of the Xiangjiang, the largest river in Hunan.
The waste has tainted a ditch below the plant, with off-white arsenic-laced water flowing into the Junshui River and finally into the Xiangjiang, Xiaoxiang Morning Herald reported.
Stones submerged in tainted river water have turned a creamy yellow color, said the newspaper.
Liao Futian, an engineer with the local environment monitoring station, said the stones were polluted by sulfide.
Arsenic occurs in sulfide compounds.
And tests in a river just 300 meters from the plant showed the arsenic content was nearly 2.42 times higher than the standard, the newspaper reported.
Flooding in August is likely to have widened the spread of pollution, said Zhang Lijun, deputy director with the local environmental protection authority.
The surrounding 10 square kilometers of land is uninhabited.
A private plant, using the mineral pyrites and mine waste to produce arsenic, was approved to be built in 1998. But it was found to have caused severe pollution due to substandard environmental facilities and was ordered to close in 2003.
However, the pollution didn’t end. The owners removed machinery and pulled down workshops, but they didn’t process waste material, Zhang said.
The authority raised 240,000 yuan (US$39,384) in 2010 to clean the surrounding area. But due to insufficient funds and a lack of technology available, waste remained unprocessed.
Environment activists highlighted the pollution in early September, and this week the county announced that 984,600 yuan would be spent tackling the pollution.
Zhang said the county was hiring a company to carry out the work, with a start date before February next year.
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